ARMENIANS STAGE DEMONSTRATIONS ON APRIL 24 ANNIVERSARY

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 25 2007

Tens of thousands of Armenians on Tuesday marked the 92nd anniversary
of killings of Anatolian Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, an event
they label as genocide, reiterating their call on Ankara as well as
the world to recognize the killings as genocide.

"We came here to pay tribute to the victims so that our neighbors
wouldn’t for a minute think that we could forget about this, so that
this won’t happen in the future," said acting Defense Minister Michael
Arutyunian. Top officials, including President Robert Kocharian,
were among those paying tribute.

While Armenian television stations in the past used images from Mt.
Ararat in Turkey during anniversary broadcasts, this year they used
images of an Armenian church on Akdamar Island in Lake Van that was
reopened earlier this year as a museum. Banners reading "1,500,000+1,"
were also shown in images in an apparent reference to the murder
of prominent Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink. Dink was killed
by a Turkish nationalist gunman outside the Ýstanbul office of his
bilingual newspaper, Agos, in late January. His funeral drew 100,000
mourners including government officials who condemned the killing.

In neighboring Iran, authorities blocked a traditional march by
ethnic Armenians on the anniversary of the alleged genocide. A group
of Iranian Armenians gathered in the garden of an Armenian church in
Tehran, first attending a service there, and then laid flowers at a
genocide monument in the garden of the church. The group dispersed
without a march to a historic church located near the Turkish Embassy
in Tehran. It was not clear why Iran refused to allow the march, which
has previously been a traditional part of the April 24 demonstrations
in Tehran.

In Moscow, a group of 200 ethnic Armenians threw Molotov cocktails
in the garden of the Turkish Embassy building. The group also tore up
Turkish flags and posters of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the
modern Turkish Republic. Russian police officers avoided interfering
in the protest while some demonstrators waved flags of the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and held aloft posters of now-jailed
PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Some protestors also waved Greek Cypriot
flags, an administration that is not officially recognized by Ankara.

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